Electrified vehicles including hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) rely on a traction battery to provide power to a traction motor for propulsion and a power inverter therebetween to convert direct current (DC) power to alternating current (AC) power. The typical AC traction motor is a 3-phase motor that may be powered by 3 sinusoidal signals each driven with 120 degrees phase separation. The traction battery is configured to operate in a particular voltage range and provide a maximum current. The traction battery is alternatively referred to as a high-voltage battery wherein a terminal voltage of a typical traction battery is over 100 Volts DC. However, improved performance of electric machines may be achieved by operating in a different voltage range, typically at voltages greater than the traction battery terminal voltage. Likewise, the current requirements to drive a vehicular electric machine are commonly referred to as high current in which the current may exceed 600 Amps in operation. Often the impact of parasitic inductances of a switch, such as a solid state switch or a power module, used to toggle the voltage and current may result in inductive coupling between the power lead and the control lead. This inductive coupling may provide delayed transitions and switching losses.
Many electrified vehicles include a DC-DC converter, also referred to as a variable voltage converter (VVC), to convert the voltage of the traction battery to an operational voltage level of the electric machine. The electric machine, that may include a traction motor, may require a high voltage and high current. Due to the voltage, current and switching requirements, a solid state switch such as an Insulated Gate Bipolar junction Transistor (IGBT) is typically used to generate the signals in the power inverter and the VVC.